James Watson The Double Helix
Bertolt Brecht The Life of Galileo
Peter Medawar Pluto’s Republic
Charles Darwin Voyage of the Beagle
Stephen Pinker The Blank Slate
Oliver Sacks A Leg to Stand On

All in all, not a bad list. I’d add some William James and Lewis Thomas, and replace A Leg to Stand On with An Anthropologist from Mars, and replace Brecht with Copenhagen, and substitute The Moral Animal for The Blank Slate. I’d also be tempted to add Damasio’s Descartes’ Error, if only because it’s been so influential. Last but not least, I’d want to include some Jonathan Weiner, either Time, Love, Memory or The Beak of the Finch.

I’d go for the James Watson’s Double Helix, then A River Out of Eden by Richard Dawkins, then The Lives of a Cell by Lewis Thomas, then The Immense Journey by Loren Eiseley,
then The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks, then “The Naturalist” by E.O. Wilson, then “Natural Acts” by David Quammen and the rest of the list would be an uneasy tie among Brian Greene, Primo Levi, James Gleick and the cartoonist named Larson.

Not thinking far as books most influential to others, since most in my list are far too recent and *very personal* choices, but if I ‘was on a deserted island…’ “Road To Reality” Roger Penrose, “God Created the Integers” Stephen Hawking, “The New Cosmic Onion” Frank Close, “Enchanted Looms” Rodney Cotterill, “The Rainbow and the Worm” Mae Won Ho, a good textbook on brain anatomy.. John Nolte’s “The Human Brain” maybe, the “Brain Atlas” too, “Inward Bound” Abraham Pais.. btw, who the hell puts textbooks on their deserted island reading list?? can i get some highlighters, pens, and a few blank 5 subject notebooks?